S.J. Byki C ok. 


oF THE 


HON. JEFFERSON DAVIS, 


Of Mississippi, 


DELIVERED IN THE 


UNITED STATES SENATE, 


On the 10th day of January, 1861, 


UPON THE 


dtlessage of the President of the Cnited States, 


ON THE 


Condition of Things in South Carolina. 


Batimore... Prinrep By JouHn Murpruy & Co. 
PUBLISHERS, BOOKSELLERS, PRINTERS AND STATIONERS, 
MarsBLE Buiipine, 182 Bautimmore STREET. 


1861. 


SPEECH. 





Mr. DAVIS. Mr. President, when I took the floor yesterday, I intended to engage 
somewhat in the argument which has heretofore prevailed in the Senate upon the great 
questions of constitutional right, which have divided the country from the beginning of 
the government. I intended to adduce some evidences, which I thought were conclu- 
sive, in favor of the opinions which I entertain; but events, with a current hurrying on 
vas it progresses, have borne me past the point where it would be useful for me to argue 
the question of rights by citing authority. To day, therefore, it is my purpose to deal 
with events. Abstract argument has become among the things that are past. We have 
to deal now with facts; and in order that we may meet those facts, and apply them to 
our present condition, it is well to inquire what is the state of the country. The Consti- 
tution provides that thé President shall, from time to time, communicate information on 
the state of the Union. The message which is now under consideration gives us very 
little, indeed, beyond that which the world, less, indeed, than reading men generally, 
knew before it was communicated. 

What, senators, to-day is the condition of the country? From every quarter of it 
comes the wailing ery of patriotism, pleading for the preservation of the great inherit- 
ance we derived from our fathers. Is there a senator who does not daily receive letters, 
appealing to him to use even the small power which one man’ here possesses to save the 
rich inheritance our fathers gave us? Tears now trickle down the stern face of man; 
and those who have bled for the flag of their country, and are willing now to die for it, 
stand powerless before the plea that the party about to come into power laid down a plat- 
form, and that come what will, though ruin stare us in the face, consistency must be ad- 
hered to, even if the Government be lost. Pe 

_ In this state of the case, then, we turn to ask, what is the character of the Adminis- 
tration? Whats the executive department doing? What assurance have we there for 
the safety of the country? But we come back from that inquiry with a mournful con- 
viction that feeble hands now hold the reins of State; that drivelers are taken in as 
eounselors not provided by the Constitution; that vacillation is the law; and the policy 
of this great Government is changed with every changing rumor of the day; nay more, 
it is changing with every new phase of causeless fear. In this state of the case, after 
complications have been introduced into the question, after we were, brought to the verge 
of war, after we were hourly expecting by telegraph to learn that the conflict had com- 
menced, after nothing had been done to insure the peace of the land, we are told in this 
last hour that the question is thrown at the door of Congress, and here rests the respon- 
sibility. 

Had the garrison at Charleston. representing the claim of the Government to hold the 
property in a fort there, been called away thirty days, nay, ten days ago, peace would 
have spread its pinions over this land, and calm negotiation would have been the order 
of the day. Why was it not recalled? No reason has yet been offered, save that the 
Government is bound to preserve its property ; and yet look from North to South, from 
East to West, wherever we have constructed forts to defend States against a foreign foe, 
and everywhere you find them without a garrison, except at a few points where troops 
are kept for special purposes; not to coerce or to threaten a State, but stationed in sea- 
eoast fortifications there merely for the purposes of discipline and instruction as artiller- 
ists. You find all the other forts in the hands of fort keepers and ordinance sergeants, 
and, before a moral and patriotic people, standing safely there as the property of the 
country. 

I ae in this Senate weeks ago, ‘‘ what causes the peril that is now imminent at Fort 
Moultrie; is it the weakness of the garrison?” and then I answered, ‘‘no; it is its pres- 
ence, not its weakness.” Had an ordnance sergeant there represented the Federal Govern- 
ment, had there been no troops, no physical power to protect it, I would have pledged 
my life upon the issue, that no question ever would have been made as to its seizure. 
Now, not only there, but elsewhere, we find moyements of troops further to complicate 
this question, and probably to precipitate us, upon the issue of civil war; and, worse than 


3 


all, this Government, reposing on the consent of the governed; this Government, strong 
in the affections of the people; this Government—lI describe it as our fathers made it, is 
now furtively sending troops to occupy positions lest ‘the mob” should seize them. 
When before, in the history of our land, was it that a mob could resist the sound publie 
opinion of the country? When before was it that an unarmed magistrate had not the 
power, by crying, ‘‘I command the peace,” to quell a mob in any portion of the land? 
Yet now we find, under cover of night, troops detached from one position to occupy an- 
other. Fort Washington, standing in its lonely grandeur, and overlooking the home of 
the Father of his Country, near by the place where the ashes of Washington repose, 
built there to prevent a foreign foe from coming up the Potomac with armed ships to 

‘take the capital—Fort Washington is garrisoned by marines sent secretly away from the 
navy-yard at Washington. And Fort McHenry, memorable in our history as the place 
where, under bombardment, the star-spangled” banner floated through the darkness of 
night, the point which was consecrated by our national song—Fort McHenry, too, has 
been garrisoned by a detachment of marines, sent from this place in an extra train, and 
gent under cover of the night, so that even the mob should not know it. 

Senators, the responsibility is thrown at the door of Congress. Let us take it. It is 
ours—’tis our duty in this last hour—to seize the pillars of our Government and uphold 
them, though we be crushed in the fall. Then what is our policy? Are we to drift into 
war! Are we to stand idly by and allow war to be precipitated upon the country? 
Allow an officer of the army to make war? Allow an unconfirmed head of a depurt- 
ment to make war? Allow a general of the army to make war? Allow a President to 
make war? No, sir. Our fathers gave to Congress the power to declare war, and even 
to Congress they gave no power to make war upon a State of the Union. It could not 
have been given, except as a power to dissolve the Union. When. then, we see, as is 
evident to the whole country, that we are drifting into a war between the United States 
and an individual State, does it become the Senate to sit listlessly by and discuss abstract 
questions, and read patchwork from the opinions of men now mingled with the dust? 
Are we not bound to meet events as they come before us, manfully and patriotically, to 
struggle with the difficulties which now oppress the country ? 

In the message yesterday we were told that the District of Columbia was in danger. 
In danger of what? From whom comes the danger? Is there a man here who dreads 
that the deliberations of th's body are to be interrupted by an armed force? Is there one 
who would not prefer to fall with dignity at his station, the representative of a great and 
peaceful government, rather than to be protected by armed bands? And yet the rumor 
is—and rumors seem now to be so authentic that we credit them rather than other means 
of information—that companies of artillery are to be quartered in this city to preserve 
peace where the laws have heretofore been supreme, and that this District is to become a 
camp, by calling out every able-bodied man within its limits to bear arms under the 
militia law. Are we invaded? Is there an insurrection? Are there two Senators here 
who would not be willing to go forth as afile, and put down any resistance which showed 
itself in this District against the Government of the United States? Is the reproach 
meant against these. my friends from the South, who advocate Southern rights and State 
rights? If so, it is a base slander. We claim our rights under the Constitution; we 
claim our rights reserved to the States; and we seek no brute force to gain any advantage 
which the law and the Constitution does not give us. We have never appealed to mobs. 
We have never asked for the army and navy to protect our rights. On the soil of Mis- 
sissippi not the foot of a Federal soldier has been pressed since 1819, when, flying from 
the yellow fever, they sought refuge within the limits of our State: and on the soil of 
Mississippi there breathes not aman who asks for any other protection than that which our 
Constitution gives us, that which our strong arms afford, and the brave hearts of our 
people will insure in every contingency. t 

Senators, we are rapidly drifting into a position in which this is to become a Govern- 
ment of the army and navy; in which the authorities of the United States is to be main- 
tained, not by law, not by constitutional agreement between the States, but by physical 
force; and will you stand still and see this policy consummated? ‘Will you fold your 
arms, the degenerate descendants of those men who proclaimed the eternal principle that 
government rest on the consent of the governed; and that every people have aright to 
change, modify, or abolish a government when it ceases to answer the end for which it 
was established, and permit this Governmentimperceptibly to slide from the moorings 
where it was originally anchored, and become a military despotism? It was well said 
by the Senator from New York, whom I do not now see in his seat, [Mr. Sewarp.] 
well said in a speech wherein I found but little to commend, that this Union could not be 
maintained by force, and that a Union of force was a despotism. It was a great truth, 
come from what quarter it may. That was not the Government instituted by our fathers; 
and against it, $0 long as I live, with heart and hand, I will rebel. . 


4 


This brings me to consider a passage in the message, which says: 


“*T certainly had no right to make aggressive war upon any State; and I am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has 
wisely withheld that power even from Congress ;”"— 


Very good— 


‘but the right and the duty to use military force defensively against those who resist the Federal officers in the execution 
of their legal functions, and against those who assail the power of the Federal Government, is clear and undeniable.” 

Is itso? Where does he get it? Our fathers were so jealous of a standing army, that 
they scarcely would permit the organization and maintenance of any army. Where 
does he get the ‘‘clear and undeniable’’ power to use the force of the United States in the 
manner he there proposes? To execute a process, troops may be summoned as a posse 
comitatus; and here, in the history of our Government, it is not to be forgotten that in 
the earlier, and, as itis frequently said, the better days of the Republic—and painfully we 
feel that they were better indeed—a President of the United States did not recur to the 
army; he went to the people of the United States. Waguely and confusedly, indeed, did 
the Senator from Tennessee [Mr. JouHNson] bring forward the case of the great man, 
Washington, as one in which he had used a power which, he argued, was equivalent to 
the coercion of a State; for he said that Washington used the military power against a 
portion of tke people of a State; and why might he not as well have used it against the 
whole State? Let me tell that Senator that the case of General Washington has no ap- 
plication, as he supposes. It was a case of insurrection within the State of Pennsylvania; 
and the very message from which he read communicated the fact that Governor Mifflin 
thought it necessary to call the militia of adjoining States to aid him. President Wash- 
ington co-operated with Governor Mifflin; he called the militia of adjoining States to co- 
operate with those of Pennsylvania. He used the militia, not the standing army. It 
was by the consent of the Governor; it was by his advice. It was not the invasion of 
the State; it was not the coercion of the State: but it was aiding the State to put down 
insurrection, and in the very manner provided for in the Constitution itself. 

But. 1 ask again, what power has the President. to use the army and the navy except 
to execute process? Are we to have drum-head eourts substituted for those which the 
Constitution and laws provide? Are we to have sergeants sent over the land instead of 
civil magistrates? Not so thought the elder Adams; and here, in passing, I will pay 
him a tribute he deserves as the one to whom more than any other man among the early 
founders of this Government—credit is due for the military principles which prevail in its. 
organization. Associated with Mr. Jefferson originally, in preparing the rules and arti- 
eles of war, Mr. Adams reverted through the long pages of history back to the republic 
of Rome, and drew from that foundation the rules and articles of war which govern in 
our country to-day, and drew them thence because he said they had brought two nations 
to the pinnacle of glory—referring to the Romans and the Britons whose military law was 
borrowed from them. Mr. Adams, however, when an insurrection occurred in the same 
State of Pennsylvania, not only relied upon the militia, but his orders, through Secretary 
McHenry, required that the militia of the vicinage should be employed; and, though he 
did order mounted troops from Phialdelphia, he required the militia of the northern 
counties to be employed as long as they were able to execute the laws; and the orders 
given to Colonel McPherson, then in New Jersey, were, that Federal troops should not 
go across the Jersey line except in the last resort. I say, then, when we trace our history 
to its early foundation, under the first two Presidents of the United States, we find that 
‘this idea of using the army and the navy to execute the laws at the discretion of the 
President, was one not even entertained, still less acted upon, in any case. 

Then, Senators, we are brought to consider passing events. A little garrison in the 
harbor of Charieston now occupies a post which, I am sorry to say, it gained by the per- 
fidious breach of an understanding between the parties concerned; and here, that 1 may 
do justice to one who has not the power on this floor, at least, to right himself—who has 
no friend here to represent him—let me say that remark does not apply to Major Ander- 
son; for I hold that, though his orders were not so designed, as 1 am assured, they did 
empower him to go from one post to another, and to take his choice of the posts in the 
harbor of Charleston; but, in so doing, he committed an act of hostility. When he dis- 
mantled Fort Moultrie, when he burned the carriages and spiked the guns bearing upon 
Fort Sumter, he put Carolina in the attitude of an enemy of the United States; and yet 
he has not shown any just cause for apprehension. Vague rumors had reached him, and 
causeless fear seems now to be the impelling motive of every public act—vague rumors of 
an intention to: take Fort Moultrie. But, sir, a soldier should be confronted by an over- 
powering force. before he spikes his guns, and burns their carriages. A soldier should be 

-confronted by a,public enemy, before he destroys the property of the United States, lest 
it should fall into the hands of such an enemy. Was that fort built to make war upon 
Carolina? ‘Was an. armament put into it for such a purpose? Or was it built for the 


5 


- protection of Charleston harbor; and was it armed to make that protection complete? 
If so, what right had any soldier to destroy that armament, lest it should fall into the 
hands of Carolina? 

Some time since I presented to the Senate resolutions which embodied my views upon 
this subject, drawing from the Constitution itself the data on which I based those reso- 
lutions. I then invoked the attention of the Senate in that form to the question as te 
whether garrisons should be kept within a State against the consent of that State. Clear 
was | then, as I am now, in my conelasion. No garrison should be kept within a State 
during a time of peace, if the State believes the presence of that garrison to be either 
offensive or dangerous. Our army is maintained for common defence; our forts are 
built out of the common treasury, to which every State contributes; and they are per- 
verted from the purpose for which they were erected, whenever they are garrisoned with 
a view to threaten, to intimidate, or to control a State in any respect. 

Yet we are told this is no purpose to coerce a State: we are told that such a power does 
not exist; but the senator from Tennessee [Mr. JoHNSON] says it is only a power te 
coerce individuals; and the senator from Ohio [Mr. WADE] seems to look upon this lat- 
ter power as a very harmless one in the hands of the President, though such coercion 
would be to destroy the State. Whatisa State? Is it land and houses? [Is it taxable 
property? Is it the organization of the local government? Or is it all these combined, 
with the people who possess them? Destroy the people, and yet not make war upon the 
State! To state the proposition is to answer it, by reason of its very absurdity. It is 
like making desolation, and calling it peace. 

There being, as it is admitted on every hand, no power to coerce a State, I ask what is 
the use of a garrison within a State where it needs no defence? The answer from every 
candid mind must he, there is none. The answer from every patriotic breast must be, 
peace requires, under all such ‘circumstances, that the garrison should be withdrawn. 
Let the Senate to-day. as the responsibility is thrown at our door, pass those resolutions, 
or others which better express the idea contained in them, and you have taken one long 
step towards peace—one long stride towards the preservation of the goverment of our 
fathers. 

The President’s Message of December, however, had all the characteristics of a diplo- 
matic paper, for diplomacy is said to abhor certainty, as nature abhors a vacuum; and it 
was not within the power of man to reach any fixed conclusion from that Message. 
When the country was agitated, when opinions were being formed, when we were drift- 
ing beyond the power ever to return, this was not what we had a right to expect from 
the Chief Magistrate. One policy or the other he ought to have taken. If a federalist, 
if believing this to be a Government of foree, if believing it to be a consolidated mass, 
and not a confederation of States, he should have said: no State has a right to secede; 
every State is subordinate to the Federal Government, and the Federal Government 
must empower me with physical means to reduce to subjugation the State asserting such 
aright If not, if a State-rights man and a democrat—as for many years it has been my 

ride to acknowledge our venerable Chief Magistrate to be—tken another line of policy 
should have been taken. The Constitution gave no power to the Federal Government to 
coerce a State; the Constitution gave an army for the purposes of common defence, and 
to preserve domestic tranquility; but the Constitution never contemplated using that 
army against a State. A State exercising the sovereign function of secession is beyond 
the reach of the Federal Government, unless we woo her with the voice of fraternity. and 
bring her back by the enticements of affection. One policy or the other shonld have been 
taken, and it is not for me to say which, though my opinion is well known; out one 
policy or the other should have been pursued. Heshould have brought his opinion to 
one coneiusion or another, and to-day our country would have been safer than it is. 

What is the Message before us? Does it benefit the case? Is there a solution offered 
here? We are informed in it of propositions made by commissioners from South Caro- 
lina. Weare not informed even as to how they terminated. No countervailing propo- 
sition is presented ; no suggestion is made. We are left drifting loosely without chart or 
compass. 

There is in our recent history, however, an event which might have suggested a policy 
to be pursued. When foreigners, having no citizenship within the United States, 
declared war against us, and made war upon us; when the inhabitants of a Territory, 
disgraced by institutions offensive to the law of every State of the Union, held this atti- 
tude of rebellion; when the Executive there had power to use troops, he first sent com- 
missioners of peace to win them back to their duty. When South Carolina, a sovereign 
State, resumes the grants she had delegated ; when South Carolina stands in an attitude 
which threatens within a short period to involve the country in a civil war, unless the 
policy of the Government be changed—no suggestion is made to us that this Government 
might send commissioners to her; no suggestion is made to us that better information 


6 


should be sought; there is no policy of peace, but we are told the army and the navy 
are in the hands of the President of the United States to be used ‘against those who 
assail the power of the Federal Government.” 

Then, my friends, are we to allow events to drift onward to this fatal consummation ? 
Are we to do nothing to restore peace? Shall we not, in addition to the proposition I 
have already made, to withdraw the force which complicates the question, send commis- 
sioners there in order that we may learn what this community desire, what this commu- 
nity will do, to put the two governments upon friendly relations ? 

I will not weary the Senate by going over the argument of coercion. My friend from 
Ohio. [Mr. Pucu,] I may say, has exhausted the subject I thank him, because it came 
appropriately from one not identified by his position with South Carolina. It came 
more effectively from him than it would have done from me, had I, as I have not, the 
power to present it as forcibly as he has done. Sirs, let me say, among the painful re- 
fiections which have crowded upon me by day ard by night, none have weighed more 
heavily upon my heart that the reflection that our separation severs the ties which have 
so long bound us to our Northern friends, of whom we are glad to recognise the Senator 
as a type. 

Now let us return a moment to consider what would have been the state of the ease if 
the garrison at Charleston had been v‘thdrawn. The fort would have stood there—not 
dismantled, but unoccupied. It wour: «w»ve stood there in the hands of an ordnance 
sergeant. Commissioners woulc have come to treat of all questions with the Federal 
Government, of those fortsas wel) 1s others They wonld have remained there to answer 
the ends for which they were constructed- the ends of defence. If South Carolina was 
an independent State, then she might hola to us such a relation as Rhode Island held 
after the dissolution of the Confederation and before the formation of the Union, when 
Rhode Island appealed to the sympathics existing petween the States connected in the 
struggles of the Revolution. and aske¢ that a commercial war should not be waged upon 
her. These forts would have stood there then to cover the harbor of a friendly State; 
and if the feeling which once existed among the people of the States had subsisted still, 
and that fort had been attacked, brave men from every section would have rushed to the 
rescue, and there imperilled their :ives in the defence of a State identified with their 
early history, and still associated ‘x their breasts with affection; and the first act of this 
kind would have been one appealing to every generous motive of those people again to 
reconsider the question of how we could iive together, and through that bloody ordeal to 
have brought us into the position in which our fathers left us. There could have been 
no collision; and there was, there could have oeen no question of property which that 
State was not ready to meet. Ifit was a question oi dollars and cents, they came nere to 
adjust it. Ifit was a question of covering an interior State, their interests were identical. 
In whatever way the question could have been presented, the consequence would have 
been to relieve the Government of the charge of maintaining the fort, and to throw it 
upon the State which bad resolved to be independent. 

Thus we see that no evil could have resulted. We have yet to learn what evil the 
opposite policy may bring. Telegraphic intelligence, by the man who occupied the seat 
on the right of me in the old chamber, was never relied on. He was the wisest man I 
ever knew—a man whose prophetic vision foretold all the trials through which we are 
now passing; whose clear intellect, elaborating everything, borrowing nothing from 
anybody, seemed to dive into the future, and to unveil those things which are hidden to 
other eyes. Need I say I mean Calhoun? No other man than he would have answered 
this description. I say, then, not relying upon telegraphic despatches, we still have in- 
formation enough to notify us that we are on the verge of civil war; that civil war is 
in the hands of men irresponsible, as it seems to us; their acts unknown to us; their dis- 
eretion not covered by any existing law or usage; and as we now have the responsibility 
thrown upon us, that justifies us in demanding information to meet an emergency in 
which the country is involved 

Is there any point of pride which prevents us from withdrawing that garrison? I 
have heard it said by a gallant gentleman, to whom I make no special reference, that 
the great objection was an unwillingness to lower the flag. To lower the flag! Under 
what circumstances? Does any man’s courage impel him to stand boldly forth to take 
the life of his brethren? Does any man insist upon going upon the open field with 
deadly weapons to fight his brother on a question of courage? There is no point of pride. 
These are your brethren; and they have shed as much glory upon that fiag as any equal 
number of men in the Union. They are the men by whom, and that is the locality, 
where the first Union flag was unfurled, and where a gallant battle was fought before our 
independence was declared—not the flag with thirteen stripes and thirty-three stars, but 
a flag with a cross of St. George, and the long stripes running through it. When the 
gallant Moultrie took the British Fort Johnson, and carried it, for the first time I be- 


7 


lieye did the Union flag fly in the air; and that was in October, 1775. When he took 
the position and threw up a temporary battery with palmetto logs and sand, upon the 
site called Fort Moultrie, that fort was assailed by the British fleet, and hombarded until 
the old logs, clinging with stern tenacity to the enemy that assailed them, were filled 
with balls; the flag still floated there, and, though many bled, the garrison conquered. 
Those old logs are gone; the eroding current has taken away the site where old Fort 
Moultrie stood; the gallant men who held it, now mingle with the earth; but their 
memories live in the hearts of a gallant people, and their sons yet live, and. like their 
fathers, are ready to bleed and to die for the cause in which their fathers bled and tri- 
umphed. Glorious are the memories clinging around that old fort which now, for the 
first time, has been abandoned—abandoned not even in the presence of a foe, but under 
the imaginings that a foe might come; and guns spiked and carriages burned where the 
band of Moultrie bled, and, with an insufficient armament, repelled the common foe of 
all the colonies. Her ancient history compare: proudly with the present. 

Can there, then, be a point of pride upon so sacred a soil as this, where the blood of the 
fathers cries to Heaven against civil war? Can there bea point of pride against laying 
upon that sacred soil to-day the flag for which our fathers died? My pride, senators, is 
different. My pride is that that flag shall net be set between contending brothers, and 
that, when itshall no longer be the common flag of the country, it shall be folded up and 
laid away like a vesture no longer used; that it shall be kept as a sacred memento of the 
past, to which each of us can make a pilgrimage, and remember the glorious days in 
which we were born. 

In the answer of the commissioners, which I caused to be read yesterday, I observed 
that they referred to Fort Sumter as remaining a memento of Carolina faith. It is an 
instance of the accuracy of the opinion which I have expressed. It stood without a 
garrison. It commanded the harbor, and the fort was known to have the armament in 
it capable of defence. Did the Carolinians attack it? Did they propose to seize it? It 
stood there safe as public property; and there it might have stood to the end of the 
negotiation without a question, if a garrison had not been sent into it. It was the faith 
on which they relied, that the Federal Government would take no position of hostility to 
them, that constituted its safety, and by whieh they lost the advantage they would have 
had in seizing it when unoccupied. I think that something is due to faith as well as 
fraternity; and I think one of the increasing and accumulative obligations upon us to 
withdraw the garrison from that fort is the manner in which it was taken—taken, as we 
heard by the reading of the paper yesterday, while Carolina remained under the assur- 
ance that the status would not be violated; while I was under that assurance, and half a 
dozen other senators now within the sound of my voice felt secure under the same pledge, 
that nothing would be done until negotiations had terminated, unless it was to withdraw 
the garrison. Then we, the Federal Government, broke the faith; we committed the 
first act of hostility ; and from this first act of hostility arose all those acts to which refer- 
ence is made in the message as unprovoked aggressions—the seizing of forts elsewhere. 
Why were seized? Self-preservation is the first law of nature; and when they no longer 
had confidence that this Federal Government would not seize the forts constructed for 
their defence, and use them for their destruction, they only obeyed the dictates of self- 
preservation when they seized the forts to prevent the enemy from taking possession of 
them as a means of destruction, for they then were compelled to believe this Federal 
Government had become an enemy. 

Now, what is the remedy? To assure them that you donot intend to use physical force 
against them is your first remedy; to assure them that you intend to consider calmly all 
the propositions which they make, and to recognize the rights which the Union was 
established to secure, that you intend to settle with them upon a basis in accordance with 
the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. When you 
do that, peace will prevail over the land, and force become a thing that nu man will con- 
sider necessary. 

I am here confronted with a question which I will not argue. The position which I 
have taken necessarily brings me to its consideration. I will merely state it. It is the 
right of a State to withdraw from the Union. The President says it is not a constitu- 
tional right. The senator from Ohio, [Mr. Wank, ] and his ally, the senator from Ten- 
nesee, argued it as no right at all. Well, letus see. What is meant by a constitutional 
right? Is it meant to be a right derived from the Constitution—a grant made in the 
Constitution? If that is what is meant, of course we all see at once we do not derive it 
in that way. Is it intended that it is not a constitutional right, because it is not granted 
in the Constitution? That shows, indeed, but a poor appreciation of the nature of our 
Government. All that is not granted in the Constitution belongs to the States; and 
nothing but what is granted in the Constitution belongs to the Federal Government ; 
and, keeping this distinction in view, it requires but little argument to see the conclusion 


f 


8 


at which we necessarily arrive. Did the States surrender their sovereignty to the Federal 
Government? Did the States agree that they never could withdraw from the Federal 
Union? 

I know it has been argued here that the Corfederation said the articles of Confederation 
were to be a perpetual bond of Union, and that the Constitution was made to form a more 
perfect Union ; that is to say, a government beyond perpetuity, or one day, or two or three 
days after doomsday. But that has no foundation in the Constitution itself; it has no basis 
in the nature of our Government. The Constitution was a compact between independent 
States; it was not a National Government; and hence Mr. Madison answered with such effec- 
tiveness to Patrick Henry, in the convention of Virginia, which ratified the Constitution, 
denying his proposition that it was to form a nation, and stating to him the conclusive fact 
that ‘‘ we sit here as a convention of the State to ratify or reject that Constitution, and how 
then can you say that it forms a nation, and is adopted by the mass of the people.”” It was 
not adopted by the mass of the people, as we all know, historically; it was adopted by each 
State; each State voluntarily ratifying it, entered the Union; and that Union was formed when- 
ever nine States should enter it; and, in abundance of caution, it was stated in the resolutions 
of ratification of three of the States, that they still possessed the power to withdraw the 
re which they had delegated whenever they should be used to their injury or oppression. 

know it is said that this meant the people of all the States; but that is such an absurdity 
that [ suppose it hardly necessary to answer it. To speak of an elective government rendering 
itself injurious and oppressive to the whole body of the people by whom it is elected is such 
an absurdity, that no man can believe it; and to suppose that a State convention, speaking for 
a State, having no authority to speak for anybody else, wou!d say that it was declaring what 
the people of the other States would do, would be an assumption altogether derogatory to the 
sound sense and well-known sentiments of the men who formed the Constitution and ratified it. 

But in abundance of caution not only was this done, but the tenth amendment of the Con- 
stitution declared that all which had not be-n delegated was reserved to the States or to the 
people. Now, I ask where among the delegated grants to the Federal Government do you 
find any power to coerce a State; where among the provisions of the Constitution do you find 
any prohibition on the part of a State to withdraw; and if you find neither one nor the other, 
must not this power be in that great depository, the reserved rights of the States? How was 
it ever taken out of that source of all power to the FederalGovernment? It was not delegated 
to the Federal Government; it was not prohibited by the States; it necessarily remains, then, 
among the reserved powers of the States. 

This question has been so forcibly argued by the senator from Louisiana, [Mr. Benzamin,] 
that I think it unnecessary to pursue it. Three times the proposition was made to give power 
to coerce a State, in the convention, and as often refused; opposed as a proposition to make 
war on a State, and refused on the ground that the Federal Government could not make war 
upon a State. The Constitution was to form a government for such States as should unite; 
it had noapplication beyond those who should voluntarily adopt it. Among the delegated 
powers there is none which interferes with the exercise of the right of secession by a State. 
As a right of sovereignty it remained to the States under the Confederation; and if it did not, 
you arraign the faith of the mer who framed the Constitution te which yeu appeal, sor they 
provided that nine States could secede out of thirteen. Eleven out of the thirteen did secede, 
and put themselves in the very position which, by a great abuse of language, is to-day called 
treason against the two States of North Carolina and Rhode Island, they still claiming to 
adhere to the perpetual Articles of Confederation, these eleven States absolving themselves 
from the obligations which arose under them. 

The senator from Tennessee, to whom I must refer again—and I do so because he is a south- 
ern senator, taking the most ostile ground against us—refers to the State of Tennessee, and 
points to the time when that State may do those things which he has declared it an absurdity 
for any State to perform. I will read a single paragraph from his speech, showing what his 
language is, in order that I may not, by any possibility, produce an impression upon others 
which his language does not justify. Here are the expressions to which I refer. I call the 
senator’s attention to them: 


“Tf there are grievances, why cannot we all go together, and write them down, and point them out to our Northern friends 
after we have agreed on what those grievances were, and say, ‘here is what we demand; here our wrongs are enumerated; 
upon these terms we have agreed; and now, after we have given you a reasonable time to consider these additional guaran- 
tees in order to protect ourselyes against these wrongs, if you refuse them, then, having made an honorable effort—haying 
exhansted all other means—we may declare the association to be broken up, and we may go into an act of revolution?” We 
ean then say to them, ‘you have refused to give us guarantees that we think are needed for the protection of our institu- 
tions and for the protection of our other interests.’ When they do this, I wil! go as far as he who goes the furthest.” 


Now, it does appear that he will go that far; and he goes a little further than anybody, I 
believe, who has spoken in vindication of the right, for he says: 

“We do not intend that you shall drive us out of this house that was reared hy the hands of our fathers. It is our house. 
It is the constitutional house. We have a right here; and because you come forward and violate the ordinances of this 
house, I do not intend to go ont; and if you persist in the violation of the ordinances of the house, we intend to eject you 
from the building and retain the possession ourselves.” 

I wonder if this is what caused the artillery companies to be ordered here, and the militia of 
this city to be organized. I think it was a mere figure of sneech. J do not believe the senator 
from Tennessee intended to kick you out of the house; and if he did, let me say to you, in all 


9 


sincerity, we who claim the constitutional right of a State to withdraw from the Union, do not 
intend to help him. He says, however, and this softens it a little: 

“We do not think, though, that we have just cause for going out of the Union now. We have just cause of complaint 
but we are for remaining in the Union, and fighting the battle like men?” 

What does that mean? In the name of common sense, 1 ask how are we to fight in the 
Union? We take an oath of office to maintain the Constitution, of the United States. The 
Constitution of the United States was formed for domestic tranquility; and how, then, are we 
to ficht in the Union? [I have heard the proposition from others, but I have not understood 
it. [ understand how men fight when they assume attitudes of hostility; but I do not under- 
stand how men remaining connected together ina bond as brethren, sworn to mutual aid and 

rotection, still propose to fight each other. I do not understand what the senator means. If 
ER chooses to answer my question I am willing to hear him, for I do not understand how we 
are to fight in the Union. 

Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. When my speech is taken altogether, I think my meaning 
can be very easily understood. What I mean by fighting the battle in the Union, is, I think, 
very distinctly and clearly set forth in my speech; and if the senator will take it from begin- 
ning to end, I apprehend that he will have no difficulty in ascertaining what I meant. But, 
for his gratification upon this particular point, [I will repeat, in substance, what | then said as 
to fighting the battle in the Union. I meant that we should remain here under the Constitution 
of the United States, and contend for all its guarantees; and by preserving the Constitution 
and all its guarantees wé would preserve the Union. Our true place to maintain these guaran- 
tees, and to preserve the Constitution, is in the Union, there to fight our battle. How? By 
argument; by appeals to the patriotism, to the good sense, and to the judgment of the whole 
country; by showing the people that the Constitution had been violated; that all its guaran- 
tees were not complied with; and [ have entertained the hope that when they were possessed 
of that fact, there would be found patriotism and honesty enough in the great mass of the 
people, North and South, to come forward and do what was just and right between the con- 
tending sections of the country. I meant that the true way to fight the battle was for us to 
remain here and occupy the places assigned to us by the Constitution of the country. Why 
did I make that statement? It was because, on the 4th day of March next, we shall have six 
majority in this body; and if, as some apprehended, the incoming administration shail show 
any disposition to make encroachments upon the institution of slavery, encroachments upon 
the rights of the States, or any other violation of the Constitution, we, by remaining in the 
Union, and standing at our places, will have the power to resist all these encroachments. 
How? We have the power even to reject the appointment of the Cabinet officers of the 
incoming President. Then, should we not be fighting the battle in the Union, by resisting 
even the organization of the Administration, in a constitutional mode; and thus, at the very 
start, disable an Administration which was likely to encroach on our rights and to violate the 
Constitution of the country? 

So far as appointing even a minister abroad is concerned, the incoming Administration 
will have no power, without our consent, if we remain here. It comes into office hand- 
cuffed—powerless to do harm. We, standing here, hold the balance of power in our 
hands; we can resist it at the very threshold. effecsallv, and do it inside of the Union, 
and in our house. he incoming Administration has not even the power to appoint a 
post-master whose salary exceeds $1,000 a year without consultation with, and the ac- 
quiescence of, the Senate of the United States. The President has not even the power to 
draw his salary—his ¢25,000 per annum—unless we appropriate it. I contend, then, 
that the true place to fight the battle is in the Union, and within the provisions of the 
Constitution. The army and navy cannot be sustained without appropriations by Con- 
gress, and if we were apprehensive that encroachments would be made on the Southern 
States and on their institutions in violation of the Constitution, we could prevent him 
from having a dollar even to feed his army or his navy. 

Mr. DAVIS. I receive the answer of the senator, and I think I comprehend now that he 
is not going to use any force, but it isa sort of fighting that is to be done by votes and not 
words; and I think, therefore, the President need not bring artillery and order out the militia 
to suppress them. I think, altogether, we are not in danger of much bloodshed in the mode 
proposed by the senator from Tennessee. 

Mr. JOHNSON, of Tennessee. I was not quite done: but if the senator is satisfied 

Mr. DAVIS. Quite satisfied. 1am entirely satisfied that the answer of the senator shows 
me he did not intend to fight at all; that it was a mere figure of speech, and does not justify 
converting the Federal capital into a military camp. But it isa sort of revolution which he 
proposes; it is a revolution under the forms of the Government. Now, I have to say, once 
for all, that as long as I am a senator here [ will not use the powers I possess to destroy the 
very Government to which I am accredited. 1 will not attempt, in the language of the sena- 
tor, to handcuff the President. I will not attempt to destroy the Administration by refusing, 
any officers to administer its function. I should vote, as I have done to administrations to 
which ! stood in nearest relation, against a bad nomination; but J never would agree, under 
the forms of the Constitution, and with the powers I bear as a senator of the United States, 
to turn those powers to the destruction of the Government I was sworn to support. 1 leave 





10 


that to gentlemen who take the oath with a mental reservation. It is not my policy. If I 
must have revolution, I say let it be a revolution such as our fathers made when they were 
denied their natural rights and chartered privileges. 


So much for that. It has quieted apprehension; and I hope that the artillery will not be 
brought here; that the militia will not be called out; and that the female schools will cont’ ae 
their sessions as lieretofore. [Laughter.] The authority of Mr. Madison, however, was 
relied on by the senator from Tennessee; and he read fairly an extract from Mr. Madison’s 
letter to Mr. Webster; and I give him credit for reading what it seems to me destroys his whole 
argument. It is this clause: 


“The powers of the Government being exercised, as in other elective and responsible Governments, under the control of 
its constituents, the people, and the legislatures of the States, and subject to the revolutionary rights of the people in ex- 
treme cases.” 


Now, sir, we are confusing language very mucn. Men speak of revolution; and when they 
say revolution, they mean bloodshed. Our fathers meant nothing of the sort. When they 
spoke of revoluuon, they spoke of an inalienable right. When they declared as an inalienable 
right the power of the people to abrogate ané modify their form of governmant whenever it 
did not answer the ends for which it was established, they did not mean that they were*to 
sustain that by brute force. They meant that it was a right; and force could only be invoked 
when that right was wrongfully denied. Great Brito’v denied the right in the case of the 
colonies; and, therefore, our revolution for indepeade..ce was bloody. If Great Britain had 
admitted the great American doctrine, there w72id have been no blood shed; and does it be- — 
come the descendants of those who proclaimed this, as the great principle on which they took 
their place among the nations of the earth, now to proclaim, if that is a right, it is one’ which 
you can only get as the subjects of the Emperor of Austria may get their rights, by force 
overcoming force? Are we, in this age of civilization and political progress, when political 
philosophy has advanced to the point which seems to render it possible that the millenium 
should now be seen by prophetic eyes; are we now to roll back the whole current of human 
thought, and again to return to the mere brute force which prevails between beasts of prey, as 
the only method of settling questions between men? t 

If the Declaration of Independence be true, (and who here gainsays it?) every community 
may dissolve its connection with any other community previously made, and have no other 
obligation than that which results from the breach of any alliance between States. Is it to be 
supposed; could any man reasoning a priori come to the conclusion that the men who fought 
the battles of the Revolution for community independence—that the men who struggled against 
the then greatest military Power on the face of the globe in order that they might possess 
those inalienable rights which they had declared—terminated their great efforts by transmitting 
to prosperity a condition in which they could only gain those rights by force? If so, the 
blood of the Revolution was shed in vain; no great principles were established; for force was 
the law of nature before the battles of the Revolution were fought. 

I see, then—if gentlemen insist on using the word ‘‘ revolution ”’ in the sense of a resort to 
force—a very great difference between their opinion and that of Mr. Madison. Mr, Madison 
put the rights of the people over and above everything else; and he said this was the govern- 
ment de jure and de facto. Call it what name you will, he understood ours to bea government 
of the people. The people never have separated themselves from those rights which 
our fathers had declared to be inalienable. They did not delegate to the Federal Government 
the powers which the British Crown asserted over the colonies; they did not achieve their in- 
deperdence for any purpose so low as that. They left us the inheritance of freemen; ie 
in independent communities, the States united for the purposes which they thought woul 
bless posterity. It is in the exercise of this reserved right as defined by Mr. Madison, as one 
to which ali the powers of government are subject, that the people of a State in convention have 
elaimed to resume the fnnetions which in like manner they had delegated to the Federal Gov- 
ernment. 

I pass from the argument. of this question, which I have previonsly said I did not intend to 
enter into at large, to ask, why is the right denied? tis part of the history of our times, it 
is part of the condition of the country, that the right is denied, because tiis conflict between 
sections, in which one was struggling for domination, the other for existence has been brought 
to the point where the dominant section insists that it will hold the other for its jurposes; 
where it claims that we shall not go in peace nor remain with our rights; and if the attempt be 
made to hold that position by force, we accept the wager of battle. 

Mississippi in her brief history claims to have shown at Pensacola and New Orleans some- 
thing of the spirit of the freemen who achieved our independence. J was reared in a county 
where, when the soil of a neighboring State was invaded by a powerful foe, the draft was who 
should stay at home, not who should go. TI also have the satisfaction to know that the pre- 
sent generation have not degenerated from the history of those who went before it. From 

many a bloody field, both in foreign and Indian war, has ascended the proud spirit of a Mis- 
sissippian enshrined in glory, whence they look down upon us to vindicate the honorable fame 
of our State; and every heart beats true to the impulse of pride and the dictate of duty. 

If this right were admitted, we should have less cause to exercise it than we have. If 
admitted, there would be less danger from a dominant section than there is, there would be 


it 


less tendency to use power, when it was acquired, to the injury of others. The denial of the 
right is a grievance inflicted on all who fear that power will be used for aggression. The con- 
cession of the right might delay its exercise, and at the same time would restrain the dominant 
section from abusirg its power so as to drive others to resort to it. Why is the right denied? 
It is an impractical question at best. If you take us out of the history of our country, throw 
us into a broad discussion of the natural rights of man, we may answer by the facts which are 

- being enacted. States have gone out, and what is the use of arguing their right? The only 
questions which remain are for yourselves: first, have you the right to coerce them back; and 
secondly, have you the power? 

My friend from Louisiana, in closing his remarks, referred to the disastrous scenes which 
might be occasioned by the invasion of the South. He did not offer the other side of the pic- 
ture: and yet I have seen that, in Northern papers, he has been criticised for saying even what 
he did. There is, however, another side to the picture. An army with banners would do but 
little harm in marching through a country of plantations. They would have but little power 
to subsist themselves in a sparsely-settled region. They would find it hard to feed the army 
with which they invaded, and would have no power to bring away prisoners and fugitives. 
How stands it on the other side? Ina country of populous cities, of manufacturing towns, 
where population is gathered from the country into towns and villages, the torch and sword 

-ean do their work with dreadful havoc, and starving millions would weep at the stupidity of 
those who had precipitated them into so sad a policy. 

We do not desire these things. We seek not the injury of any one. We seek not to 
disturb your prosperity. We, at least to a great extent, have looked to our agricultural 
labor as that to which we prefer to adhere. We have seen in the*diversity of the occu- 

ations of the States the bond of Union. We have rejoiced in your prosperity. We 
Hays sent you our staples, and purchased your manufactured articles. We have used 
your ships for the purpose of transport and navigation. We have gloried in the exten- 
sion of American commerce everywhere; have felt proud as yourselves in every achieve- 
ment you made in art; on every sea that you carried your flag in regions to which it 
had hitherto not been borne; and, if we must leave you, we can leave you still with the 
good-will which would prefer that your prosperity should continue. If we must part, I 
say we can put our relations upon that basis which will give you the advantage of a 
favored trade with us, and still make the intercourse mutually beneficial to each other. 
If you will not, then it is an issue from which we will not shrink ; for, between oppres- 
sion and freedom, between the maintenance of right and submission to power, we will 
invoke the God of Battles, and meet our fate, whatever it may be. 

I read, a short time ago, an extract from the speech of the Senator from Tennessee, which 
referred to the time when ‘* we’’—I suppose it means Tennessee—would take the position 
which it was said to’be an absurdity for South Carolina to hold: how can the change of 
names thus affect the question, and who is to judge in the case? Tennessee still was put, in 
the same speech, in the attituae of a great objector against the exercise of the right of seces- 
sion. Is there anything in her history which thus places her? Tennessee, born of secession, 
rocked in the cradle of revolution, taking her position before she was matured, and claiming 
to be a State because she had violently severed ber connection with North Carolina through 
an act of secession and revolution, claimed to have become a State. I honor her for it. I 
honor the gallant old Sevier for maintaining the rights of which North Carolina attempted to 
deprive him, and 1 admire the talent which made recruits from every army which was sent to 
subdue him. Washington and Jackson, too, are often presertec as authority against it— 
Washington, who led the army of the Revolution, Washingtc™.. whose reputation rests upon 
the fact that with the sword he cut the cord which bounce the Colonies to Great Britain, they 
not having the justification of the sovereign attributes belonging to States; Washington, who 
presided when the States seceded from the Confederation, and formed the Union, in disregard- 
of the claims of the States not agreeing to it; and Jackson, glorious old soldier, who, in his 
minority, upon the sacred soil of South Carolina, bled for the cause of revolution and the 
overthrow of a government which he believed to be oppressive, who through his whole life 
indicated the same east of character, standing in an attitude which to-day would be called re- 
bellion and treason, when he opposed the Federal Government, denied their power, contemned 
their orders to disband his troops, threatened to put any officer of the United States army in 
irons who came into his camp to recruit, and marched his force, the Tennessee militia, back 
from Washington, in Mississippi, to the place whence they had started. Bad authorities are 
these for our opponents—they are names under the shadow of which we can safely repose! 

If we were reduced to arguing the question on the ground of expediency—if we had to con- 
vince the dominant scction that it was good for them that their best customers should leave 
them—if we had to convince them that they should not any longer have the power to tax us— 
that they should not collect the revenue which fills the treasury and builds up their vast pub- 
lic works—I fear we should not sueceed ; but if they are sincere in believing that we are of « 
no advantage to them—if they look upon the Southern States asa burden—if they think 
we require their protection—then we are ready to relieve them of the incumbrance. 

The question which now presents itself to the country is, What shall we do with events as 
they stand? Shall we allow this separation to be total? Shall we render it peaceful, with a 


12 

view to the chance that when hunger shall brighten the intellects of men, and the teachings of 
hard experience shall have tamed them, they may come back, in the spirit of our fathers, to 
the task of reconstruction? Or will they have that separation partial ; will they give to each 
State all its military power ; will they give to each State its revenue power; will they still 
preserve the common agent; and will they thus carry on a government different from that 
which now exists, yet not separating the States so entirely as to make the work of recon- 
struction equal to a new creation ; not separating them so as to render it utterly impossible to. 
administer any functions of the Government in security and peace? F 

I waive the question of duality, considering that a dual executive would be the institution of 
a king-log. 1 consider a dual legislative department would be to bring into antagonism the 
representatives of two different countries, to war perpetually, and thus to continue not Union, 
but the irrepressible conflict. There is no duality possible (unless there be two confederacies) 
which seems to me consistent with the interests of either or of both. It might be that two 
confederacies could be so organized as to answer jointly many of the ends of our present 
Union ; it might be that States, agreeing with each other in their internal polity—having a 
similarity of interests and an identity of purpose—might associate together ; and that these 
two confederacies might have relations to each other so close as to give them a united power 
in time of war against any foreign nation. These things are possibilities ; these things it be- 
comes us to contemplate ; these things it devolves on the majority section to consider now ; 
for with every motion of that clock is passing away your opportunity. It was greater when 
We met on the first Monday in December than it is now ; it is greater now than it will be on 
the first day of next week. We have waited long ; we have come to the conclusion that you 
mean to do nothing. dn the committee of thirteen, where the resolutions of the Senator from 
Kentucky [Mr. Critrenpen] were considered, various attempts were made, but no prospect of 
any agreement on which it was possible for us to stand, in security for the future, could be 
matured. [ offered a proposition, which was but the declaration of that which the Constitu- 
tion announces ; of that which the Supreme Court had, from time to time, and from an early 
period, asserted ; of that which was necessary for equality in the Union. Not one single vote 
of the republican portion of that committee was given for the proposition. : 

Looking, then, upon separation as inevitable, not knowing how that separation is to occur, 
or at least what States it is to embrace, there remains to us, I believe, as the consideration 
which is most useful, the inquiry, how can this separation be effected so as to leave to us the 
power, whenever we shall have the will, to reconstruct. It can only be done by adopting a 
policy of peace. It can only be done by denying to the Federal Government all power to 
coerce. It can only be done by returning to the point from which we started, and saying, 
‘© This is a Government of fraternity, a Government of consent ; and it shall not be adminis- 
tered in departure from those principles.”’ 

1 do not regard the failure of our constitutional Union, as very many do, to be the failure of 
self-government ; to be conclusive in all future time of the unfitness of man to govern him- 
self. Our State governments have charge of nearly all the relations of person and property. 
This Federal Government was instituted mainly as a common agent for foreign purposes, for 
free trade among the States, and for common defence. Representative liberty may remain in 
the States after they are separated. Liberty was not crushed. by the separation of the colo- 
nies fron: the «other country, then the most consututional monareny and the freest govern- 
ment known. Still less will liberty be destroyed by the separation of these States to prevent 
the destruction of the spirit of the Constitution by the mal-administiation of it. There will 
be injury—injury to all ; differing in degree, differing in manner. The injury to the manufac- 
turing and navigating States will be to their internal prosperity. The injury to the Southern 
States will be mainly to their foreign commerce. All will feel the deprivation of that high 
pride and power whi, belong to the flag now representing the greatest Republic, if not the 
greatest Government upon the face of the giobe. [ would that it stil! remained to consider 
what we might calmly have considered on the first Monday in December—how this could be 
avoided ; but events have rolled past that point. You would not make propositions 
when they would have been effective. I presume you will not make them now ; and I know 
not what effect they would have if you did. Your propositions would have been most wel- 
come if they had been made before any question of coercion, and before any vain boasting of 
power ; for pride and passion do not often take counsel of pecuniary interest, at least among 
those whom I represent, but you have chosen to take the policy of clinging to words, in dis- 
regard of events, and have hastened them onward. It is true, as shown by the history of all 
revolutions, that they are most precipitated and intensified by obstinacy and vacillation. The 
want of a policy, the obstinate adherence to unimportant things, have brought us toa condi- 
tion where | close my eyes, because [ cannot see anything that encourages me to hope. * 

In the long period which elapsed after the downfall of the great republics of the East, when 
despotism seemed to brood over the civilized world, and only here and there constitutional 
monarchy, even, was able to rear its head; when all the great principles of republican, repre- 
sentative government had sunk deep, fathomless, into the sea of human events; it was then 
that the storm of our Revolution moved the waters. The earth, the air, and the sea became 
brilliant; and from the foam of ages fose the constillation which was set in the political firma- 
ment as a sign of unity in confederation and community independence, coexistent with 
confederate strength. That constillation has served to bless our people. Nay, more; its light 


13 


has been thrown on foreign lands, and its regenerative power will outlive, perhaps, the Gov- 
ernment, as a sign for which it was set. It may be pardoned to me, sir, who, in my boyhood, 
was given to the military service, and who have followed under tropical suns, and over northern 
snows, the flag of the Union, suffering for it as it does not become me to speak. If I here 
express the deep sorrow which always overwhelms me when I think of taking a last leave of 
that object of early affection and proud association, feeling that henceforth it is not to be the 
banner which, by day and by night, | am ready to follow, to hail with the rising and bless at 
the setting sun. But God, who knows the hearts of men, will judge between you and us, at 
whose door lies the responsibility of this. Men will see the effoits I have made, here and 
elsewhere; that I have been silent when words would not avail, have curbed and impatient 
temper, and hoped that conciliatory councils might do that which 1 knew could not be effected 
by harsh means. And yet the only response which has come from the other side has been a 
stolid indifference, as though it mattered not, ‘‘let the temple fall, we do not care.’’ Sirs, 
remember that such conduct is offensive, and that men may become indifferent even to the 
objects of their early attachments. 

If our Government shall fail, it will not be the defect of the system, though its mechanism 
was wonderful, surpassing that which the solar system furnishes for our contemplation; for it 
had no centre of gravitation; each planet was set to revolve in an orbit of its own, each moving 

by its own impulse, and all attracted by the affections which countervailed each other. It has 
been the perversion of the Constitution; it has been the substitution of theories of morals for 
principles of government; it has been forcing crude opinions about things not understood upon 
the domestic institutions of other men, which has disturbed these planets in their orbit; it is 
this which threatens to destroy the constillation which in its power and its glory, had been 
gathering one after another until, from thirteen, it had been risen to thirty-three stars. 

If we accept the argument of to day in favor of coercion as the theory of our Government, 
its only effect will be to precipitate men who have pride and self-reliance into the assertion of 
the freedom and independence to which they were born. Our fathers would never have entered 
into a confederate Government which had within itself the power of coercion. 1 would not 
agree to remain one day in such a Government after I had the power to get out of it. To 
argue that a man who follows the mandate of his State, resuming her sovereign jurisdiction 
and power, is disloyal to his allegiance to the United States, which allegiance he only owed 
through his State, is such a confusion of ideas as does not belong to an ordinary compre- 
hension of our Government. It is treason to the principle of community independence. It is 
to recur to that doctrine of passive obedience which, in England, cost one monarch his head, 
and drove another into exile; a doctrine which, since the revolution of 16%8, has obtained 
nowhere where men speak the English tongue; and yet all this it is necdful to admit before we 
accept this doctrine of coercion, whichis to send an army and a navy to do that which there are 
no courts to perform; to execute the law without a judicial decision, and without an officer to 
serve process. This, I say, would degrade us to the basest despotism under which man could 
live; the despotism of amany-headed monster, without the sensibility or regardful consideration 
which might belong to a hereditary king. 

But the Senator found fromm somewhere, I believe Georgia, a newspaper article which sug- 
gested a preference for a constitutional monarchy. Does the Senator believe there is any 
considerable number of people in any of the States who favor the establishment of a constitu- 
tional monarchy? If so, let me at once, speaking with that assurance which is given to me 
by those knowing more of that people than myself, say that the apprehension is vain. I am 
sure that the same feeling prevails in that Stateas my own; the same which exists in his State 
of Tennessee; and in each of them there are many like the Lucins Junius, 


‘¢_____ that would have brooked 
The eternal Devil to keep his state in Rome, 
As easily as a King.” 


Mr. IVERSON. Ass allusion has been made by the Senator from Mississippi to an article 
which appeared in a paper in my own town, and about which a good deal ot noise has been 
made, and which was referred to by the Senator from Tennessee, in his celebrated speech, the 
other day, as evidence that there was a party in the South in favor of a constitutional monar- 
chy, I take the liberty to say that that was a communication merely to the paper, and that it 
slipped in without the knowledge and consent of the proprietors of the paper ; and in the very 
next paper the editors disclaimed and denounced it. I will take the opportunity to say, in 
conjunction with what the Senator from Mississippi has said, that there is not one man ina 
million, as far as I know and believe, in the State of Georgia, or elsewhere in the South, who 
would be in favor of any such principle. 

Mr. DAVIS. If, Mr. President, a paper containing such a doctrine could subsist upon 
subscription anywhere in the United States, I should esteem it nearly as bad an indication as 
the adoption of the doctrine of slavish submission ; and either the one or the other I should 
consider a far worse sign of man’s incapacity to govern himself than any which is presented 
by the resumption of the grants that a State has made. 1 have no idea that there is any such 
feeling within the limits of the Southern States. 

There are two modes, however, of dissolving the Union. One alone has been contemplated. 
It was that which proceeded from States separating themselves from those to whom they are 


14 


united. There is another. It is by destroying the Constitution ; by pulling down the polit-: 
ical temple ; by forming a consolidated government. Union, in the very meaning of the 
word, implies the junction of separate States. Consolidation would be the destruction of the 
Union, and far more fatal to popular liberty than the separation of the States. But, if fanati- 
eism and sectionalism, like the Blind giant of old, shall seize the pillars of the temple to tear 
them down, in order that they may destroy its inmates, it but remains for us to withdraw ; 
and it will be our purpose to commence the erection of another on the same plan on which our 
fathers built this, We share no such common ruin as falls upon a people by consolidation 
and destruction of the principles of liberty contained in the Constitution; by interference 
with community and social rights ; and we go out of such a government whenever it takes 
that form in accordance with the Constitution, and in defence of the principles on which that 
Constitution rests. We have warned you for many years that you would drive us to this 
alternative, and you would not heed. J believe that you still look upon it as a mere passin 

political move, or as a device for some party end, knowing little of the deep struggle wi 

which we have contemplated this as a necessity, not as a choice, when we haye been brought 
to stand before the alternative—the destruction of our community inde pengeh Sty or the de- 
struction of that Union which our fathers made. You would not heed us. You deemed our 
warning to be merely to the end of electing a candidate for the miserable spoils of office, of 
which I am glad to say I represent a people who have had so little, indeed, that they have 
never acquired an appetite for them. Yet you have believed—not looking to the great end to 
which our eyes were directed—that it was a mere political resort, by which we would intimi- 
date some of your own voters. You have turned upon those true friends of ours at the 
North who have vindicated the Constitution and pointed out to you the danger of your course, 
and held them responsible for the censure you received, as though you had not in fact ag- 
gressed; even at this session, after forty years of debate, you have asked us what was the 
matter. tet 

Your platform on which you elected your candidate, denies us equality. Your votes refuse 
to recognize our domestic institutions which pre-existed the formation of the Union—our 
property which was guarded by the Constitution. You refuse us that equality without which 
we should be degraded if we remained in the Union. You elect a candidate upon the basis 
of sectional hostility ; one who in his speeches, now thrown broadcast over the country, 
made a distinct declaration of war upon our institutions. We care not whether that war be 
made by armies marching for invasion, whether it be by proclamation, or whether it be by 
indirect and covert process. In both modes, however, you have declared your hostility. 
The leading members of that party, some of them now before me, making speeches in various 
portions of the country, during the last summer, even after the election was over, when no 
purpose of the canvass remained still to excite them, announcing the triumph which had been 
achieved as the downfall of our domestic institutions; and still you ask us to make specifica- 
tion, to file an indictment, as though we intended to arraign you before a magistrate’s court, 
Our fathers united with yours on the basis of equality, and they were prompted to forma 
union by the fraternity which existed between them. “Do you admit that equality? Do you 
feel that fraternity? Do your actions show it! They united for the purpose not only of 
domestic tranquillity, but for common defence ; and the debates in the convention which 
formed the Constitution set forth that the navigating and manufacturing interests of one sec- 
tion, and the better defence in the other, were the two great objects which drew them to- 
gether. Are you willing now to fulfil the conditions on which our fathers agreed to unite? 

When you use figurative language, its harshness indicates the severity of your temper, and 
the bitterness of your hate. When you talk about having your heel on the slave power and 
grinding it into dust; when you talk about the final triumph ; when you talk about the ex- 
tinction of slavery, an institution with which you have nothing to do, and of which you know 
nothing—is this the fraternity, is this the Union, to which we wereinvited ? Is that an adaiin- 
istration of the Government under which we can live in safety? Is this a condition of things 
to which men, through whose veins flow the blood of the Revolution, can stoop, without ae- 
knowledging that they had sunk from their birthright of freedom to become slaves? 

I care not to read from your platform ; I care not to read from the speeches of your Presi- 
dent elect. You know them as I do; and the man who Is regarded all over this country as the 
directing intellect of the party to which he belongs, the Senator from New York, [Mr. Sew- 
ARD,| has, with less harshness of expression than others, but with more of method, indicated 
this same purpose of deadly hostility inevery form in which it could be portrayed. Did we 
unite with you in order that the powers of the General Government should be used for des- 
troying our domestic institutions? Do you believe that now, in our increased and increasing 
commercial as well as physical power, we will consent to remain united toa Government ex- 
ercised for such a purpose as this? 

W hat boots it to tell me that no direct act of aggression will be made? I prefer direct to in- 
direct, hostile measures which will produce the same result. JI prefer it, as I prefer an open 
to a secret foe. Is there a Senator upon the other side who to-day will agree that we shall 
have equal enjoyment of the Territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that 
we have equally paid in their purchases, and equally bled in their acquisition in war? Then 
is this the observance of your compact; whose is the fault if the Union be dissolved? 
Is there one of you who controverts either of these positions? ThenI ask do you give: 


15 


us justice; do we enjoy equality ? If we are not equals, this is not the Union to which we 
were pledged ; this is not the Constitution you have sworn to maintain, nor this the Govern- 
ment we are bound to support. 

There is much, too, which is exceedingly offensive in the speculations you make upon our 
servants when you talk about negro insurrection. Governments have tampered with slaves ; 
bad men have gone among the ignorant and credulous people, and incited them to murder and 
arson ; but of themselves—moving by themselves—I say history does not chronicle a case of 
negro insurrection. San Domingo, so often referred to, and so little understood, is not a case 
where black heroes rose and acquired a Government. It was a case in which the French 
Government, trampling upon the rights and the safety of a distant and feeble colony by send- 
ing troops among them, broughton a revolution, first of the mulattoes, and afterwards of the 
blacks. Their first army was not able to effect this. It required a second one, and that 
army to be quartered on the plantations ; nay, after all, it required that the masters should 
be arrested on the charge of treason and taken to France, before the negroes could be aroused 
to insurrection. 

Do you wonder then that we pause when we see this studied tendency to convert the Gov- 
ernment into a military despotism? Do you wonder that we question the right of the Presi- 
dent to send troops to execute the laws wherever he pleases? When we remember the con- 
duct of France, and that those troops were sent with like avowal, and quartered on planta- 
tions, and planters arrested for treason—just such charges as are made to-day against Southern 
men—and broughtaway, that insurrection might be instigated among their slaves ? 

T seek not to exasperate or to intensify the causes of difficulty. It is right that we should 
understand each other. I thought we had done so before,and was surprised to hear the 
question asked, ‘what is the matter??? The last canvass, I thought, had expressed the feel- 
ings and the opinions of the Southern States. The State of Mississippi gave warning in so- 
emn resolutions passed by her Legislature. Those resolutions were printed elsewhere, and 
*were generally known. She declared her purpose to take counsel with her Southern sister 
States whenever a President should be elected on the basis ofa sectional hostility to them. 
With all this warning, you paused not. The quarrel is not of our making. Our hands are 
stainless. You aggress upon our rights and our homes, and under the will of God, we will 
defend them. 

There is a strange similarity in the position of affairs at the present day to that which the 
Colonies occupied. Lord North asserted the right to collect the revenue, and insisted on 
collecting it by force. He sent troops to Boston harbor and to Charleston ; he quartered 
troops in those towns. The result was collision, and out of that collision came the separa- 
tion of the Colonies from the mother country. The same thing is being attempted to-day. 
Not the law, not the civil magistrate, but troops are relied upon now to execute the laws. 
To gather taxes in the Southern ports, the army and navy must be sent to perform the func- 
tions of magistrates. It is the old case over again. Senaters of the North, you are re-enact- 
ing the blunders which statesmen in Great Britain committed ; but among you there are some 
who, like Chatham and Burke, though not of our section, yet are vindicating our rights. 

I have heard with some surprise, for it seemed to me idle, the repetition of the assertion 
heretofore made, that the cause of the separation was the electionof Mr. Lincoln. It may be 
a source of gratification to some gentlemen that their friend is elected; but no individual had 
the power to produce the existing state of things. It was the purpose, the end; it was the de- 
elarations by himself and his friends which constitute the necessity for providing new safe- 
guards for ourselves. The man was nothing, save as he was the representative of opinions, of 
a policy, of purposes, of power, to inflict upon us those wrongs to which freemen never tamely 
submit. 

Senators, I have spoken longer than I desired. I had supposed it was possible, avoiding 
argument and not citing authority, to have made to you a very brief address. It was thought 
useless to argue a question which now belongs to the past. The time is near at hand when the 
places which have known us as colleagues laboring together can know us in that relation no 
more forever. Unsuccessfully,and I regret it, have I striven to avert this impending catastrophe. 
For the few days which I may remain, I will labor that that catastrophe shall be as little as 
possible destructive to public peace and prosperity. If you desire at this last moment to avert 
@ivil war, so be it; itis better so. If you will but allow us to separate from you peaceably, 
since we cannotlive peaceably together, to leave with the rights we had before we were united, 
since we cannot enjoy them in the Union, then there are many relations which may stil] sub- 
sist between us, drawn from the associations of our struggles from the revolutionary era to the 
present day, which may be benefiicial to you as well as to us. , 

If you will not have it thus, if in the pride of power, if in contempt of reason and in reli- 
ance of upon force, you say we shall not go, but shall remain as subjects to you, then, gentle- 
men of the North, a war is to be inaugurated, the like of which men have not seen. Suffi- 
ciently numerous on both sides, in close contact with only imaginary lines of division, and 
with many means of approach, each sustained by productive sections, the people of which 
will give freely both of money and of store, the conflicts must be multiplied indefinitely; and 
masses of men sacrificed to thetdemon of civil war, will furnish heecatombs, suchas the recent 
eampaign in Italy did not offer -.At the end of all this, what will you have effected? De- 
struction upon both sides; subjugation upon neither; a treaty of peace leaving both torn and 
bleeding; the wail of the widow and the cry of the orphan substituted for those peaceful 


é 


16 7 
£ 


notes of domestic happiness that now prevail throughout the land; and then you will agree 
that each is to pursue his separate course as best he may. This is to be the end of war. 
Through a long series of years you may waste your strength, distress your people, and get at 
last to the position which you might have had at first, had justice and reason, instead of self- 
ishness and passion, folly and crime, dictated your course. - 

Is there wisdom, is there patriotism in the land? If so, easy must be the solution of this 
question. If not, then Mississippi’s gallant sons will stand like a wall of fire around their 
State; and [ go hence, not in hostility to you, but in love and allegiance to her, to take my 
place among her sons, be it for good or for evil. 

I shall probably never again attempt to utter here the language either of warning or of 
argument. I leave the case in your hands. If you solve it not before I go, you will have still 
to decide it. Towards you individually, as well as to those whom you represent, I would that 
I had the power now to say there shall be peace between us forever. Would that I a; 
the intercourse and the commerce between the States, if they cannot live in one Unio 1 
still be uninterrupted ; that all the social relations shall remain undisturbed ; t the L 
Mississippi shall visit freely his father in Maine, and the reverse; and thé shall be 
welcomed when he goes to the other, not by himself alone, but also by his ne a: 
all it kindly intereourse which once subsisted between the different section the Union 
shall continue to exist. It is not only for the interest of all, but it is my profoundest wish, 
my sincerest desire, that such remnant of that which is passing away may grace the memory 
of a glorious, though too brief, existence. 

Day by day you have become more and more exasperated. False reports have led you to 
suppose there was in our section hostility to you evinced by manifestations which did not 
exist. In one ease, I well remember, when the senator from Vermont (Mr. Cottamer] was 
serving with me on a special committee, it was reported that a gentleman who had gone from 
a commercial house in New York had been very inhumanly treated at Vicksburg, and this 








and my friends could not learn that such a man had ever been there; but, if he had b 
there, no violence certainly had been offered to him. Falsehood and suspicion have thus 


embarrassed a question which we then had pending. I wrote to Vicksburg for ae 


you on step by step in the career of crimination, and perhaps has induced to some part o 
our aggression. Such evil effects we have heretofore suffered, and the consequences now 
ave their fatal culmination. On the verge of war, distrust and passion increase the danger. 

To-day it is in the power of two bad men, at the opposite ends of the telegraphic line between 

Washington and Charleston, to precipitate the State of South Carolina and the United 8 

into a conflict of arms without omer cause to have produced it. ; Me 

nd still will you hesitate ; sti r 

ence and allow events to shape themselves? No longer can you say the responsibility is A 
the Executive. He has thrown it upon you. He has notified you that he can do nothing. 
And you therefore know he will do nothing. He has told you the responsibility now rests 
with Congress; and I close asI began, by invoking you to meet that responsibility, bravely 
to act the patriot’s part. If you will, the angel of peace may spread her wings, though it be 
over divided States; and the sons of the sires of the Revolution may still go on in friendly 
intercourse with each other, ever renewing the memories of a common origin; the sections, 
by the diversity of their products and habits, acting and reacting beneficially, the com- 
merce of each may swell the prosperity of both, and the happiness of all be still inter- 
woven together. Thus may it be; and thus it is in your power to make it. [Applause in 
the galleries.] # 


if 


4 


; A, 
will you do nothing. Will you ‘sit with sublime indi he 


o 


te 


